Ever since the Indian representative read out the unhappily worded statement in the UN General Assembly on January 11, Mrs. Gandhi has been at pains to dissipate the impression that she endorses the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan and that she is going to tilt towards Moscow. Such a clarification might have been necessary to some extent even if South Block had drafted Mr. Brajesh Mishra’s speech for the General Assembly with greater care, because a lot of influential individuals in the United States and elsewhere in the West had convinced themselves during Mrs. Gandhi’s earlier tenure as Prime Minister that she was generally inclined to take a pro-Soviet stance in international affairs. But Mr. Mishra’s statement startled even the more sober observers in the US who had taken a less superficial view of her position and knew that her approach on every major foreign policy issue was determined by her appreciation of India’s national interests. They should now be fully assured. For the President’s address to the joint session of Parliament and the statement by the minister for external affairs, Mr. PV Narsimha Rao, on Wednesday cannot leave the slightest scope for doubt that New Delhi is determined not only to stay out of the cold war that Soviet and US actions are provoking in the region, but also to do all it can to avoid this dangerous development.
The government of India is concerned over the US and Chinese plans to rearm Pakistan and help the Afghan insurgents in a big way. The first raises the problem of security for this country. But New Delhi is equally concerned with the larger problem which is that support for the unpopular military regime in Islamabad can aggravate internal tensions in Pakistan and thereby weaken rather than strengthen its security. The reported demonstrations in Baluchistan provide an unexpectedly quick confirmation of the validity of this viewpoint.
Similarly, encouragement to the insurgents cannot possibly create conditions in which it might be possible for Mrs. Gandhi or anyone else to persuade the Kremlin to begin to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. But however strong her reservations regarding the US, Chinese and Pakistani responses to the Soviet takeover in Afghanistan, she has not drawn the inference that she cannot maintain reasonably friendly ties with Washington and improve those with Beijing and Islamabad. On the contrary, it is perhaps the first time that she has through the President’s address offered to settle all outstanding issues with China, including the border dispute, on the basis of equality. This is a highly significant pronouncement. For implicit in it is the formulation that New Delhi expects to be in a position to moderate the policies of those countries as well. Mrs. Gandhi has not fallen for the simplistic approach which the left has been trying to sell. Under her leadership, India will not scurry for safety and get under the Soviet umbrella. It will try and open a dialogue with all interested governments in its bid to avoid a military confrontation across its border.